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They do not notice it at first.
After what he has endured, Baelor is afforded a sharper temper. A man who took a mace to the head at Ashford and lived may be forgiven impatience — even words spoken more freely than courtesy usually allows in private company.
So none remark upon it when the careful polish slips from his speech. Not until Lyonel Baratheon decides it is finally time to see the prince recovered — for appearances, no doubt — and the ever-gracious Baelor Targaryen says something even his kin cannot pretend not to hear.
“Gods,” Baelor says, looking him over without shame. “Hair like that should be illegal on a man.”
The silence settles heavy.
Maekar stares. Valarr freezes with his cup halfway raised. Even Aerion has nothing to say.
It is Lyonel who breaks it, of course — laughing.
“I was told there was nothing wrong with him.”
Understanding lands all at once.
“What are you talking about? I am perfectly well,” snaps the Heir of the Realm.
But he is not.
Maekar knows it now.
At Ashford he struck him — more than once — and the maesters spoke endlessly of how the head bleeds, how blood does not always mean death. When Baelor woke, called him a bastard and then pulled him into an embrace, Maekar believed the gods merciful.
Yet now he watches Baelor track the movement of Lyonel Baratheon’s mouth as he speaks, sees the bright, unguarded interest in mismatched eyes, and feels dread settle in his stomach.
This is no mercy.
He looks to his nephew for shared disapproval and instead finds the boy smiling into his breakfast while his father basks in princely attention.
Maekar rises so abruptly the table rattles and leaves without excuse, heading straight for the maester before Baelor does something truly foolish.
Like fuck a Baratheon.
By supper Lyonel sits comfortably between them.
The maester offers no cure. A blow like Baelor suffered loosens restraint — thoughts spoken before they can be weighed, impulses acted upon before they can be stopped.
And Maekar cannot help replaying the signs he ignored: the near-cruel sharpness with Aerion, the impatience with well-wishers, the lingering looks Baelor no longer bothers to disguise.
His brother remains himself.
Only without walls.
Late that night, when the camp has quieted and the boys have retired, Maekar finds him alone in his solar.
Baelor stands at the window, moonlight pale in the grey at his temples. For a moment it turns almost white.
Maekar remembers mud. Blood soaking the back of his head. The certainty he would never see him grow old.
He sits across the desk with a cup of wine.
“Say it,” Baelor says without turning. “You are thinking loudly.”
“Like you have been?” The petulance escapes before Maekar can stop it.
Baelor turns at last.
The moonlight catches his hair — dark still, but threaded now with grey — and for a moment Maekar sees it as it will be one day: white, like his own. Matching, instead of the contrast they have carried all their lives.
At Ashford, with his brother lying in the mud and blood running down his armour, Maekar thought he would never see that day.
He drinks before the thought can settle.
Baelor watches him. “Are you jealous?”
Maekar scoffs. “Of Lyonel Baratheon? Don’t be absurd.”
Usually Baelor would soften then.
Instead his mouth curves — wicked, unfamiliar — and he crosses the space to sit on the edge of the desk, close enough Maekar must tilt his head back to meet his eyes.
“Definitely jealous,” Baelor says, before he can interrupt. “Is it because I admired his hair? You know I prefer yours.”
He reaches out then — only to brush his fingers briefly against Maekar’s sleeve, nothing that could be named, yet deliberate all the same.
“I sent him back to his tent,” Baelor murmurs.
Closer now.
“And chose to remain with you.”
When Maekar wakes in the early hours, sunlight spills through the window and turns Baelor’s hair almost white where he lies beside him in the oversized bed meant for a future king.
At Ashford he thought he had killed him.
That was the worst thing imaginable.
Then Baelor lived, and that was the best outcome the gods could grant.
Then came this change, and Maekar believed it the cruellest twist yet.
Now, watching him breathe beside him — warm, alive, here — he is no longer certain.
Perhaps this was not the worst outcome after all.